Target BNP: a battle for the soul of east London

While BNP leader Nick Griffin is standing for parliament in Barking, control of the local council is the party's main target. Now campaigners have begun to challenge the far right in an area where its rhetoric on jobs and homes has strong appeal

Football flags in a shop window in Barking and Dagenham. Photograph: Rex Features

Target BNP: a battle for the soul of east London

While BNP leader Nick Griffin is standing for parliament in Barking, control of the local council is the party's main target. Now campaigners have begun to challenge the far right in an area where its rhetoric on jobs and homes has strong appeal

Saturday 20 March 2010 20.06 EDT
First published on Saturday 20 March 2010 20.06 EDT

The "war-room", as it has become known, occupies a vast space in a derelict building in the far east of London. A giant banner, draped across the back wall, bears the words "hope not hate". Inside, political activists, local councillors and researchers are hunched over computer screens or huddled in meetings. On another wall hangs a large map of arguably the most significant constituency in British politics: the London borough of Barking and Dagenham.

The anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has just relocated its headquarters here. Last week Nick Lowles, its national director, explained why. "Seven weeks from today, the BNP could take control of its first council in Britain," he said. "That council," stressed Lowles, leaning farther forward to emphasise his point, "will have a £200m budget. Giving them that power to propagate their views is frightening."

From the windows of the fourth-floor war-room, it is possible to make out the familiar blue logo of Ford towering over the vehicle manufacturer's site at Dagenham. Now the occasional puff of white smoke is the only indication of the company's scaled-back operation. Deindustrialisation, along with high levels of immigration and joblessness, and a desperate shortage of council housing, have turned territory that was once safe Labour into the leading national target for the far right.

As a result, the BNP is throwing everything it has at Barking and Dagenham ahead of the general and local elections, which are expected to be held on the same day, 6 May. The party's leader, Nick Griffin, is standing against a government minister, Margaret Hodge, in Barking. But Griffin versus Hodge may be little more than a high-profile sideshow. "The council," said Griffin, recently. "That is the real prize."

With 12 councillors in Barking and Dagenham, out of a total of 51, the BNP is the official opposition to Labour, which has 34. Local BNP activists are confident that in the year of a general election that Labour is expected to lose, a council majority is a realistic prospect. And the consequences of that outcome for the borough's large immigrant population are clear. Griffin has already declared his desire for a "sons and daughters" policy for local housing and school places, allocated on the basis of how long a family has lived in the area.

"In Barking and Dagenham there has been the perfect storm for the BNP," said Lowles, tipping his head and focusing on the map. "There are six wards and who takes control of them will be key." Sam Tarry, a community organiser for the Hope not Hate campaign in Dagenham, placed his hand on the wall over an area labelled as Goresbrook. "BNP support is strongest here, in the centre," he said.

The residential streets of Goresbrook are lined with identical terraced houses, each with a small, usually well-kept garden. A solitary St George's flag hangs from the windows of one home, flapping in the wind. In the local community hall, 16 elderly locals are sitting at lines of trestle tables, bent over bingo cards, with markers gripped in their fingers. Brenda Letchford is shouting out the numbers. "Right! Eyes down, looking, aaand five and eight, 58... all the threes, 33..."

Many of these bingo players said they had arrived in the area from parts of the East End – Bethnal Green, Bow, Canning Town, Stratford and Shoreditch. Some were "bombed out", others moved away because they didn't like the pace of change in central London.

Now many felt the same thing was happening in their new home. Iris Elliott, 67, leant forward conspiratorially. "There are too many foreigners in the borough and they have brought problems," she said, talking of rubbish piling up in front gardens and Africans subletting their homes room by room. "We were told they were given £45,000 to move here. That is why I'm voting BNP."

Next to her was Marion Buthlay, a petite 88-year-old with a mass of bright white, curly hair. "Children born here can't get houses or places for their children in school. We don't feel it is our country any more," she said. "But I'll vote Labour – always have."

Similar tales can be heard all over the area – those of children and grandchildren waiting year after year for a council house, only to apparently be overtaken by immigrants at the last moment. Griffin has not been slow to echo these themes.

Speaking to the Observer last week, the BNP leader said the reason that Barking and Dagenham was the party's prime target was Labour's record in the area. Locals had moved out of London because mass immigration had "smashed" their communities. Now the same thing was happening again.

Social housing – its provision and its allocation – is perhaps the crucial electoral issue here. Margaret Thatcher's "right-to-buy" policy diminished the local housing stock; the refusal by subsequent Labour governments to allow councils to build more homes left the local party vulnerable to the fury of previously loyal voters.

"I think New Labour have been complacent – especially on housing," said Phil Waker, the Labour councillor in charge of the issue in the borough. "We will fight any government on this issue." Waker has had some success. He and local resident Rita Giles, a 75-year-old who has supported Labour in every election for more than half a century, took a petition to Westminster about the problems. Earlier this month the foundations were laid for the first council houses to be built in the borough in 27 years.

Taking on the issues is the first part of the Labour fightback in Barking and Dagenham, but tackling the urban myths is also key. The BNP have told people that they are here to defend the borough against an "Africans for Essex" conspiracy, in which the government has paid immigrants to move into the area.

While it is true that some London boroughs provided incentives for those moving out of council housing, in reality only a handful families used that to come to the borough and all but one were white, according to Lowles. Nevertheless, the overwhelming feeling in parts of Goresbrook is that Griffin's party is a legitimate second choice.

"It would not matter if it was the BNP, the Green party or Martians coming in – as long as they were an alternative to Labour," said Letchford, chair of a residents' association, whose husband is standing as a Labour candidate in the ward. "You can't blame everything on the immigrants – but people do."

And it is true – you don't need to scratch hard in Barking and Dagenham to discover widespread anger towards the Labour party. Alan Kiff, chair of the ward's other residents' association, accused the party of assuming that the traditional support of the white working class in Barking and Dagenham was unbreakable.

"It became complacent and needed a kicking," said Kiff, 62, a warehouse manager, sitting in his front room and gesticulating as he spoke. On local matters, however, he is not critical of the two BNP councillors in the ward – one of whom is the party's campaign co-ordinator, Richard Barnbrook. "In council elections," Kiff said, "people aren't interested in party politics. Can I fault those two councillors on what they have done on local issues? No I can't."

Labour's decision never to share a platform with the BNP in the borough has not helped its cause. The result in some residents' meetings is that locals only ever see, or hear from, their far-right representatives.

And the BNP is, of course, working hard to exploit widespread fears about immigration, which is high in a borough with the cheapest housing in Greater London. Kiff complained that the "cultural standard of living" had gone into decline, with what he perceived as the loss of values once treasured in the area. "Like queuing," he said.

A short walk across the estate, Kiff's friend Linda Coulson – whom he describes as the community's "surrogate mother" – is not about to vote BNP. The reason, she said, was that her uncle died in the second world war and "I owe it to him". But others would vote BNP, she said: "Labour don't care about us. We are not deprived, just forgotten."

A paper published this month by the thinktank Policy Network lays out the conditions that are required for the far right to thrive: economic insecurity, cultural anxiety and political alienation. According to Professor Montserrat Guibernau, author of the report, the end of the cold war and the triumph of postwar liberal capitalism has led to a weakening of Labour values.

And as a sense of social solidarity and egalitarian values declined, competition and individualism flourished – leading to a widening gap between the elite and the disillusioned. Manufacturing industries moved out and immigrants – who were prepared to work for less money – moved in.

"What the elite see as globalisation opportunities the unemployed see as a threat. And they feel resentful towards new people and towards politicians for allowing it to take place," said Guibernau, arguing that the scandal over parliamentary expenses had made the situation worse.

In this sense, Barking and Dagenham is textbook. By the mid-1950s, the number of Ford employees here peaked at more than 40,000. Car workers in this former industrial hub of east London built close to 11m vehicles until production stopped in 2002. Now the Ford factory is the home of an engine plant. Related industry and commerce has left Dagenham and its docks. Many of the buildings that once housed Ford are derelict. A vacuum – and an unemployment rate of 8% – is all that remains.

Guibernau argued the BNP was still in its infancy, "unpolished and unsophisticated" compared to its European counterparts. But she warned that, elsewhere, the radical right was seen by supporters as anti-corruption, anti-elite and in favour of common sense. The way to tackle the threat, she added, was not to ignore it but to stand up to it.

That is what Lowles, Hodge and the local council are attempting to do, to the increasing irritation of Griffin. The BNP leader has accused Labour campaigners of "outrageous smears and lies" in previous elections. "But [the voters] haven't seen anything like this campaign in Barking and Dagenham," he said. "The Labour party is out to stop us."

Tarry is one of the most active. He was born and bred in the area and the prospect of the BNP taking over the council is a terrifying one. "We are already seeing the legitimisation of racist views. There has been low-level violence. African people have had stones thrown through their windows. Muslims have had paint smeared on their cars. That is with 12 councillors. "

Tarry also said he had met people in the area who were afraid to say they didn't support the far right party.

Part of the strategy is therefore to inject confidence into those who oppose the BNP. Within weeks the team will send a glossy, 12-page magazine to every woman in the borough. There will be action days, with hundreds taking to the streets to knock on doors and deliver tens of thousands of leaflets and tabloid newspapers.

They have also taken tips from Barack Obama by bringing onboard Blue State Digital, the online campaigning company he used to win the American presidency. Searchlight now has an email list of 142,000 people, of whom 20,000 are actively helping. Telephone canvassing can take place from anywhere in the country, with people downloading a script and 20 numbers across the borough.

"The BNP may say they have moderated, but that is just PR. They are the same old racist party they always were," said Lowles.

"They still believe in the racial superiority of one group. They still believe in an all-white Britain. After the Beijing Olympics there was a motion from the council to send a formal congratulations to the British team for its success and the BNP refused to back it because non-whites won medals."

Rita Giles will be hoping the fightback succeeds. Sitting on a bench by a war memorial to those who died in the second world war, the 75-year-old chair of a local residents' association had an air of authority as she spoke. She was angry about the housing issue too, she said, but Griffin's party was not the answer.

"If someone says to me, 'I am voting BNP', I say, 'Why?' – and I have yet to receive a good answer," she said. Her husband, Raymond, died 10 years ago and he was "Labour through and through". She said, sadly: "He would not like what is happening here at all."